A fatal strike on democracy

TNN|

Dec 28, 2007, 03.25 AM IST

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The assassination of former Pakistan PM Benazir Bhutto at a rally in Rawalpindi has, without doubt, established the ability of purveyors of Islamist terror to derail the nascent democratic political process. It has also raised serious doubts about President Pervez Musharraf's ability to contain fanatical Islamist terror from swamping the entire country.

The fate of the controversial parliamentary elections on January 8 is now also in grave doubt. This is particularly so as Benazir's PPP was widely expected to emerge as the largest single party. Political leaders of South Asia would do well to take note of the fact that Benazir's assassination perpetuates the larger South Asian trend of 'dynastic' leaders in the region falling victims to murderous designs of ethno-religious terrorists.

More importantly, they should realise the perils of striking up ambivalent relationships with religious fundamentalists and pandering to their militant intolerance in the name of political exigency. Indira Gandhi's murder in 1984, not to forget Rajiv Gandhi's in 1991, and Benazir's now, have conclusively established that danger.

This lesson, translated for Musharraf and the prospective premier of Pakistan, would mean that they actively reconsider continuing with the traditional jirga-based tribal system of governing FATA and Waziristan, where the Pakistani Constitution does not apply.

The way the Islamists have, after the fall of the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan, consolidated their position in those areas is alarming. Much more disturbing is the effectiveness with which the militants have used those areas to launch operations deep inside Pakistan.

Islamabad should realise that it cannot enforce the writ of the constitution in those areas through force alone. Of course, Islamist militancy would, in the first instance, have to be countered through military might. But the backward social consensus that supports such terror can be transformed only through a truly democratic political process.

Musharraf should now realise how his kangaroo route to democracy, which led to the subversion of all institutions and suspension of constitutional guarantees even after he had revoked the emergency, ended up strengthening the radical Islamists. Such politics of bad faith has enabled them to surreptitiously conflate the deficit of democracy under Musharraf with his aggressive modern secularist agenda.

Pakistan has always had only one choice: secular modernity over illiberal terror. And it could not have come across more sharply than it has now.